Eagle-Eye Cherry - Permanent Tears

JUL 01 1999 · 12:00

Eagle-Eye Cherry - Permanent Tears (1999) Director: Johan Camitz Era: Late-90s Post-Grunge Singer-Songwriter (1999) - Peak of the acoustic-driven alternative rock crossover era, when MTV and VH1 co-promoted introspective male singer-songwriters to mainstream audiences across Europe and North America This video holds high curatorial value as one of the final documented works of Johan Camitz, a visually distinctive Swedish director whose small but influential body of work, including the Spice Girls' 'Wannabe', left a lasting mark on 1990s visual culture. Paired with Cherry's emotionally direct songwriting, it is a concise, well-preserved artefact of the late-90s European acoustic alt-pop moment and a worthy reference point for both music video direction history and Scandinavian crossover pop studies. Context: Released in 1999 as a single from Eagle-Eye Cherry's debut album 'Desireless' (1997), 'Permanent Tears' arrived during the commercial peak of the Scandinavian singer-songwriter export wave that brought artists like Cherry to mainstream European and American audiences in the wake of 'Save Tonight'. The video's black-and-white aesthetic and emotionally charged visual language situate it within a broader late-90s tendency to signal artistic seriousness through stripped-back, film-influenced production, a counterpoint to the maximalist pop and nu-metal visuals dominating MTV at the time. Cherry, the son of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Swedish artist Moki Cherry, and half-sibling of Neneh Cherry, brought a cosmopolitan, cross-cultural identity to a genre often coded as white American rock, lending the video a subtler cultural resonance. Director notes: 'Permanent Tears' (1999) was the second music video Camitz directed for Eagle-Eye Cherry, following their collaboration on 'Save Tonight' (1998). IMDb and IMVDb both credit Camitz as director. IMDb lists the video as shot in black and white, with a runtime of approximately 4 minutes, released in the United Kingdom in 1999. The video was produced within the final year of Camitz's active career before his death in August 2000. The production reflects his signature style: offbeat, eccentric visual storytelling with fluid camerawork and unconventional character framing, applied here to a more introspective, emotionally restrained register suited to Cherry's confessional songwriting.